HOUSEBUILDER Bellway is to axe 250 jobs and begin a dramatic slowdown in building following a "washout spring" for home sales, it emerged yesterday.

HOUSEBUILDER Bellway is to axe 250 jobs and begin a dramatic slowdown in building following a "washout spring" for home sales, it emerged yesterday.

The Newcastle-based company which is Britain's fourth-largest housebuilder and runs two Scottish divisions from Hamilton and Livingston, revealed that house reservations slumped by more than 47% year-on-year in the past 10 weeks. The period was seen as a crucial post-winter period that Bellway hoped would allow them to "make hay while the sun shines".

It now predicts that legal completions for the current financial year to end-July 2008 would be down by up to 10%.

Sales for 2007-08 are expected to be between 10% and 15% lower, which would bring total completions for the year down to 6500 units from 7638 in 2006-07. Bellway, whose shares touched a five-year low at 560.5p on Wednesday had planned for more than 8000 completions.

Now the group is looking at cutting costs, overheads and jobs in an effort to get supply more in line with current demand. It is also expected to slow down the rate in which it completes housebuilding by around 50%.

The jobs will be cut across the UK, with office staff such as administration workers, quantity surveyors, buyers and sales administrators targeted.

It is understood Bellway, which specialises in affordable homes, has already made 370 employees redundant - about 15% of its 2476 workforce in the UK.

Group finance director Alistair Leitch said: "It's sad we have had to do this. You have to cut your cloth accordingly to what you are producing at any one time.

"We have a situation where over the past nine months, finance has never been so much on the front page of newspapers and people have got to the stage where they have had enough. They are thinking that if everyone is saying house prices are going to fall, they are going to wait over the summer, have a nice holiday and come back and the chances are the house they wanted will still be there.

"Customer confidence has been completely sapped."